Zimbabwe’s former Transport Minister, Nicholas Goche, has appeared in court facing charges of stock theft.
According to the state-controlled Herald newspaper and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, Goche was Thursday granted $50,000 bail by a Bindura Magistrates Court and ordered to surrender his passport, report every Friday at a local police station and resident at his Shamva farm.
Goche allegedly sold 40 heifers worth US$35,000 to a man identified as Honest Mupanedengu in November 2018, who ferried some of them to his farm. Goche then allegedly resold the remaining 18 beasts valued at US$18,000 to another person.
Goche, who held various cabinet positions and was unreachable for comment, was fired by the late former president Robert Mugabe for allegedly hatching a plot to overthrow him.
Mugabe was toppled in a defacto military coup in 2017.